The Other World
by thatcutellamachan
Summary: Naruto wakes up in another body, in another world, surrounded by things and people that don't make sense; enemies are friends and the dead are alive.  Now he must piece back the events that brought him to the world and decide if he even wants to go home.
1. Chapter 1

**A very old concept that's been floating in my head for awhile.**

...

The Other World

...

His mouth was full of gravel.

Naruto coughed and reached his hand up through the concrete and beside his head. He twisted his burning face toward his fingers. He scraped his tongue along his top teeth to force the rocks out of his mouth, but he was too thirsty to manage to spit.

"Hey," Naruto said to his torn stomach. He lay where he was, assessing the situation Scrapes, burns, nothing as bad as it felt. He sat up, using his raw palms to support himself. Naruto hid his grimace under apathy, trying to put on a brave face. "Sasuke."

Naruto blinked. He was in the dark, and he was alone.

"Sasuke?" Naruto called out into the darkness, "I'm not going to just take that without a fight!"

There were lights at the far edge of the darkness. Naruto blinked, training his wide blue eyes on the light. The sun, it seemed, flickered in and out of existence.

There were long black curtains over a window. Nartuo sat quickly up to his knees, ignoring the pain as only a trained ninja could. He both over and underestimated and found himself stumbling. Carefully, even afraid, he steadied himself.

He was lighter, much lighter. Naruto felt under his shirt, made of a light material he didn't remember wearing, and found himself reeling at the feeling of loss. His muscles were gone, and instead his fingers dipped deep into empty air to touch an impossibly thin stomach. Naruto touched his knuckles to his skin, and gently felt up along bony ribs. "Alright," he said softly.

His feet were bare, and they hurt. With each step his middle nail dug into the side of his second toe. It was the same with the nails on his fingers, Naruto scrapped his nails against his wrist just to feel with ragged touch against his skin.

With slow steps, feeling as if he was falling apart, Naruto shuffled to the edge of the curtain. He shook his head once, feeling odd, as if something was wrong with his head. His thin fingers curled around the edge of the building.

It was impossible.

Buildings don't get this tall.

Naruto stood on the edge of a broken glass window and stared down onto a world so small he could barely see the figures of people on the bottom. More cars then he'd ever seen, perhaps he'd only even seen a few in his life, were thundering by at speeds not even the fastest ninjas could achieve. They were almost as fast as the Yellow Flash himself, but there were hundreds, _thousands _of them speeding by.

Naruto stepped back quickly from the scene. His eyes fell on a drop of blood on the floor. He stared down at the source of the blood, his own skin He was wearing jeans ragged enough to see all of his legs, legs that were just light skin stretch to its breaking point over bones. _What is wrong with me?_ Naruto was terrified. There were strange markings on his ankles and his thighs, words he'd never read and pictures he didn't understand. Naruto lay back, suddenly overwhelmed, and his gaze fell on a figure only know revealed by the light.

Suspended from a rafter, a skeleton dangled from its neck.

It was not just a skeleton. There was blood all over its body, and muscles crumpled in a heap at its feet. White paste dripped from its eyes and something like thick guts was leaking out of its teeth. The brain, sliding between the incisors, slunk to the ground in an impossibly slow fall.

"Dear Kami," Naruto whispered. He stumbled on his hands and knees away from the sight.

_Why doesn't Naruto test it, _Sasuke had said, _and then he'll be useful for something._

"I'm useful!" Naruto shouted into the darkness at the monsterous corpse, "What about you?" As he stepped back his foot touched something odd and the thing crumpled beneath it. Naruto grabbed it and held it, shifting to make sure it caught onto the light.

The note, written on impossibly manufactured paper, was in Naruto's own handwriting.

I can't go on, it read, not every day, alone, unloved. I can't keep making my way on my own. I'm almost sixteen. Sixteen years of nothing and no one.

Naruto's horrified, wide blue eyes shifted up to the corpse.

Sixteen years ago my uncaring parents couldn't drive a mile up a road to leave me at an orphanage. I've lived my life on the streets, cared by nothing, fighting for everything. Drugs won't help me, not anymore, they only force back the- this- all of my- lonliness.

The words were writted now with fast, angry handwriting, The drugs only remind me of what I've done to get them. What I've let be taken from me. Everything. I have nothing to call my own.

Naruto leaned back, riveted to the writing.

I can't do this anymore. I can't be me anymore. Why is it others have homes, families, friends, and food when I have nothing? Why is it no one will know to look for me to find my body? No one will care when I die. No one will care. I've tried all my life to make someone care for me and in sixteen years I haven't managed. I've been told suicide is selfish, but since I have no one to attend my funeral and no one will cry about me then I don't think I'm selfish. I'm getting rid of one more crackhead. One more crackhead off the streets. That's the governor's thing, isn't it? Get the homeless off the streets? Well it hasn't worked for me. Nothing has, because I'm the last to get every good thing. So I don't have any, no good things. And I'm tired of it.

Naruto. Uzumaki.

Naruto held the suicide note in his hands and realized, _The crazy old market lady was right_. After a long moment of silence, Naruto stood up. "New world," he said, his voice cracking in pain as he thought of the last. _Thrown away_, Naruto realized. _He didn't mean it, _his own voice inside him reasoned, _he didn't mean to._

"Next time Sasuke wants someone to test some old lady's magic mirror in a market place in the den of theives, he had better pick Karin," Naruto growled.

In the awkward body, his shuffled his way to the stairs. He stuck the note in his pants pocket, all while wondering if the innumerable holes in his pants would hold anything. Slowly, Naruto started the long journey down the stairs. As he did so, he wondered what an 'elevator' was.

When he reached the bottom, he was exhausted enough to fall asleep on the gorund. His first view of the new world from eye level was lost from his sleep, but Naruto had enough sense to sneak onto a bus. He had to sneak since he wasn't sure what counted as currency and he was fairly sure he didn't have any anyways. It was better to sleep, though, sourrounded by people then in an alley where someone could stick a kunai up his back.

The new world would make sense in the morning.

...

A grumpy old lady with a fur coat poked Naruto in the arm with her cane.

Naruto woke with a jump and, surprise, disrupted the careful balance he'd achieved in the night of being sprawled over both seats.

"You're disgusting," the grumpy old lady snarled, her double chins wobbling as she did so. She was clutching her cane like a sword in one hand and a purse with a strange puddle of fur in the other.

Naruto had thought he was sleeping. "I..." He started. The bus was almost completely empty, but the morning sun light was streaming through the side. He'd been aloud to sleep on it all through the night. The new world was much kinder than Konoha had been.

Naruto tried to stand up to wake himself up better, but his hand caught on something and he fell back onto the ground with a force so hard it rattled his thin body. His arm was chained to the seat. "Or not," he realized. There was a man in what appeared to be a uniform, although it was blue, and he was watching Naruto with an angry look on his face. "I'm in trouble."

The old lady, apparently vindicated, waddled her way up to the front of the bus and sat down.

_What did she even want, _Naruto wondered in confusion.

The windows of the bus were slightly tinted, but Naruto could make out some things they passed. There were stoplights, shops, a few carts, and others things Naruto recognized, but despite how a quick glance of the city might look like Konoha there was a glaring difference. The city went on forever, and the world was sourrounded by things much more... modern. Besides, Naruto couldn't see a single ninja headband anywhere.

He was shaken out of his comparison by the man in uniform, who sat down in the empty seat driectly in front of Naruto and then turned in such a way that the two were face to face. "Now," the man said. And he pulled off the ridiculous glasses that covered half of his face.

Naruto was so stunned by the man's identity that he forgot he was in another word and he shouted, "ASUMA!"

Asuma stared at Naruto, stunned for a moment, before he fingered a strange badge on his shoulder and then said, "Of course." His name was sewn into the fabric below it. "Now," Asuma said, leaning cooly against the headrest, "I think you know the rules against misuse of public transportation, as someone like you might."

Naruto blinked at him.

"So, I don't think I can let you off with a warning," Asuma said, "since I can't smoke on these damn things then you have to follow the laws too."

'Smoke'. The word made Naruto interested for some reason. It was odd; he'd never cared for Asuma's habit before.

"Tell me, kid, where are you from and who can I call to pick you up?" Asuma looked at Naruto, scratching his untrimmed beard. With a single, almost impressive motion, he brough his sunglasses back onto his face.

"Call?" Naruto wondered how Asuma expected to shout to someone from where they were.

"Yes. Parents. Relative. Friends. Roommate."

Naruto's mind flooded o the note, and then to all the people he'd left behind in the other world. The real world.

_GODDAMN YOU SASUKE FOR MAKING ME STEP THROUGH THE STUPID GLOWING MIRROR!_

_What rules does this world have, _Naruto thought nervously, _how am I supposed to know anything? All I know is from my note my life sucks!_

"I need an answer. I don't care if you're high, hungover, drunk, or all three. Talk." Asuma's form was rigid and cold.

Naruto slowly got to his feet, and carefully sat back down on the bus. The bus stopped then, and a few people got on and then off the moment they saw Naruto and Asuma. "I..." He said. Asuma was waiting and, backed into a corner, Naruto decided to say as much of the truth as he dared. "Say, I don't remember who I am. I don't remember my life here, I don't remember where I came from, I don't remember anything. How would I convince you of that?"

"So," Asuma said coldly, "high. Very high."

"What does that mean?"

"Are you going to continue to be a public nuisance?" Asuma stared down at Naruto's clothes, the markings on his body, and frowned.

"What?"

Asuma nodded. "Then I guess I'll have to take you in. It's a good thing this bus is going straight past the station, isn't it?"

"Station? For trains?"

Asuma stood up, sat in the seat right next to Naruto, and refused to say anything more. When they stopped in front of a giant building with the words 'Amaya City Police', Asuma unlocked Naruto's wrist from the seat and, sticking the strange metal object in the back of his pants, replaced it with his hard, uncaring grip. He pushed Naruto out of the bus and forced him down the side.

"Good riddance," said the old lady. The fur thing she was holding moved, and two beady eyes peeked out of its prison. Naruto stared at the oversized rat in confusion; he didn't understand why anyone would keep one as a pet.

"Down the stairs," Asuma said when Naruto wasn't complying with him.

Naruto had to lean heavily against the railing to walk, nis legs faltered from beneath him. His stomach was growling, but Naruto seemed to have an odd place in his mind where he could easily ignore it. He buried that and the pain from Asuma's hard grip on his wrist away, concentrating solely on moving the unfamiliar body.

They were on the street for only moments, just enough time for Naruto to be blasted from all sides by the noises of the city in the day. Then Asuma had pulled Naruto inside.

The building was silent, and they walked across marble steps toward a clear desk where an impossibly beautiful woman, perhaps a geisha, was dressed in pants and a red blouse cut unseemingly low. Naruto's face reddened immediately at the site of her, but Asuma didn't seem to notice as he walked straight to her. "Is the chief in?"

"He's interrogating a subject about the homicide in the Wayner building," the secretary said. Her name, a tag pinned to her shirt by what appeared to be her bra, a black silk article that was clearly showing, was Claire Rivers.

'_Claire_'. Naruto wasn't even sure how to pronounce such an unusual name.

"This the four-one-two from last night?" Claire Rivers asked, sending a look of condemnation Naruto's way.

"He's stoned," Asuma said.

Naruto's eyes widened. "I'm getting stoned?"

"Yeah," Claire snorted with a chuckle, "sure is. Why did it take you so long to get him?"

"My wife had some trouble," Asuma said with open discontent, "she wanted me _right away_ and wouldn't take no for an answer."

_Asuma and Kurenai are married?_ Naruto shook his head, trying to make sense of the new world. _That's good. That's not a bad thing._

"Well, stop talking to me and do what you have to with that drunk," Claire Rivers said. She trned to a metal block on her computer, opened it up, and began to press buttons on it.

Naruto leaned forward, trying to see what it was, but only got an image of odd squares and text on a page before Asuma yanked on his wrist and forced him away. "She's not into guys like you," Asuma said with humor in his voice.

_I'm not into girls like her_, Naruto retorted in his head.

Asuma led him toward a glass door, although the glass was smoked out. He stepped through, and immediately Naruto could hear chatter.

"Do you have the file for the breaking and-"

"-down the hall, to the left-"

"-chief's suspect is a forty five year old male landowner-"

"Keep the possibility of serial killers out of-"

"-the press doesn't need to know."

"-and did the criminal confess to larceny or-"

"-in interrogation-"

Naruto knew where he was. He was in the ninja headquarters, and certainly not in Konoha anymore. He'd broken a law. He was going to die, or at least loose a hand, and he was so weak the only thing that could possibly save him was the Nine-Tailed Fox.

There were rows upon rows of desks, some messy, some impeccable clean, two completely empty with black sheets over them. Asuma forced Naruto to sit down in a chair beside a desk in the corner. He took out the metal locking device and forced it again onto Naruto's wrist, this time clamping both down and making Naruto stuck to the chair.

Naruto, easily, could break his thumbs and get out, so he wondered what the precaution was even supposed to prove.

People in business clothes, most women more covered but two were in skirts short and tight enough to belong to the kind of girls Jiraya had liked to 'research' with, and men wearing odd suits, strange strips of fabric around their necks that Naruto remembered seeing maybe once back in Konoha, with shirts and pants of varying color, size, texture, and smell. The majority of the men had shadows, like Asuma, and several had deep lines under their eyes. The room was bustling, everyone running somewhere and those who weren't were yelling on a phone or writing things on some of the large white chalkboards aroudn the room with pictures clipped to them.

Naruto looked back at Asuma, feeling comfort in the strange place by being near at least one person he recognized. Asuma was searching through the bottom of his desk for something. Naruto's eyes scanned the desk and fell on a picture. It was Asuma next to a young woman. They were both smiling, and both wearing rings on their fingers. She was not Kurenai.

Asuma, doing it methodically and without probably thinking about it, pushed the picture to face down as he brought a form up to his desk and set it down. He took a writing utensil and clicked it.

"The ink is inside," Naruto realized as he stared at it.

Asuma wrote his name on the top of the form then left his writing utensil hanging over the line 'Subject'. "Name?"

Naruto was about to say his name, stopped, thought about the suicide note from his other self, and then said his name, "Naruto. Uzumaki, Naruto."

Asuma snorted at the name. "Well, your parents loved you."

Naruto's cheeks burned. "They..." he began to say, but, thinking back to the world, he realized this Naruto had no knowledge who his parents had been. "They did," he said anyways.

"Not accusing you." Asuma wrote, 'drunk', 'public nuisance', 'didn't pay fare for public transportation', and checked three boxes on the side. "Where do you work?"

Naruto had no idea, so he just shook his head.

Asuma wrote checked 'unemployed'. "Next of kin?"

"Don't have any," Naruto replied.

Asuma glared at him. Apparently that answer was not acceptable in this world, whereas in Konoha it had been common. "Parents?"

"Dead," Naruto said calmly.

"Uncles, aunts, cousins?"

"I don't think I have any," Naruto said. He remembered how his mother was an orphan, and he knew next to nothing about his father's childhood, and decided to shrug at Asuma's disbelieving glare. Asuma lit another cigarette. Naruto's eyes were drawn to it by a power he couldn't control.

"Light?" Asuma asked.

Naruto just nodded.

Asuma shrugged, "If it gets you to talk," and pulled out a second cigarette, lit it, and handed it to Naruto.

Naruto stuck it in his mouth, breathed it in, and the disgusting smell that had revolted him in the other world felt like an old friend curling around his lungs.

"Any contacts at all?"

"I don't remember," Naruto said. He had to lean down awkwardly to deal with the cigarette, but Asuma didn't bother to help him.

"How did you get stoned last night?"

Naruto, sick of leaning toward his wrist, managed to get one of his hands out of the metal locking device without breaking his thumb, and he pulled it up to his mouth and took another breath. "I don't know what that means?"

"Where do you live?"

"I'm not sure."

"Have any friends?"

Thinking about the note, Naruto said, "I don't think so."

"Your age?"

"Fifteen."

Asuma's eyes widened. He reached over, grabbed the cigarette, and threw it into a trash bin.

"What was that for?" Naruto asked.

"Why didn't you damned tell me you were underage before I started this whole damned thing?" Asuma said angrily, "Damned kid."

Naruto wrinkled his forehead in confusion. "I'm an adult," he said.

"Not in my world," Asuma replied.

The words stuck so true Naruto felt sick to his stomach. "I see," he realized.

"I need your legal guardian's name," Asuma demanded.

"I'm my own guardian. I don't need anyone to take care of me."

"Who signs your forms, kid?"

Naruto leaned back at Asuma's angry tone. "What forms?"

"Do you want me to arrest you?"

"What does that mean?"

Asuma stood up sharply. "Stay where you fucking are," he growled. "Kurenai!" Asuma stomped off.

Naruto, twisting the metal easily under his hands, slipped his second hand free. He rubbed his eyes and yawned.

Asuma had a brown bag under his desk. Curious, Naruto reached down and opened it. Inside were several pictures of the woman in the photograph on the desk and a few notes. Naruto then turned his gaze to the metal object that was exactly like the one on the secretary's desk. He pushed several buttons, not sure what they meant only several of them were characters, but nothing happened until his palm brushed against a pad and the screen lit up.

There was writing on the screen. 'Memo', it read, Chief wants majority of free hands investigating the gruesome murder on the Wayner building.

There was a photograph of the body.

Asuma came back to the desk, followed by a woman in a short white and black stripped desk.

"Kurenai," Naruto said and he smiled at her.

"Yeah," she said, eyeing Naruto suspiciously. Her eyes fell to the screen, and then to the metal locking devices on the floor. "You didn't cuff him?" She asked Asuma, incredulous.

"I did," Asuma said.

They both stared at Naruto.

Naruto grinned nervously and tried not to look at the picture of the skeleton of his own other, dead, body glaring at them from the screen.

"Alright, kid," Kurenai sat down in Naruto's chair. Her eyes, normally bright red, had a slightly darker shade then Naruto remembered. They were more auburn. "My name is Kurenai. I'm a head detective. I am a decorated war hero. I could lock you down in the jails with all of our lowlifes, drungs, drug lords, murderers, and rapists for weeks without probable cause or even a crime. If you do not cooperate with me, I will do so. Do you understand?"

"I think," Naruto admitted.

"Why do you only 'think'? Do you _want _to share a room with a child molester?"

"No," Naruto said.

"Now. Your name is Naruto Uzumaki. That is a fact?"

"Yeah."

"Where do you live?"

"I don't know."

"Who takes care of you?"

"Nobody."

"Where were you born?"

"I'm not sure."

"What is your birthday?"

"I..." Naruto bit his lip. "I don't kno-"

"What's your mothers name?"

"It was Kushina," Naruto told Kurenai, "she's dead now."

"Your father dead as well?"

"Yes."

"What was his name?"

Naruto wasn't sure whether he should know this, but since he did, he decided there was no use hiding it. "Minato Namikaze."

Kurenai stared at him. Her expression, which had been caring, shifted to disgust. "Really? You're going to go with that? _You're _the long lost son of Minato Namikaze? Come on, kid, you can do better. Do you honestly think I would _ever _believe someone like _you _is the son of a man like _that_?"

Naruto's face turned bright purple. "I..." Embarrasment sunk like a fire into his cheeks.

"He says he's fifteen," Asuma told Kurenai.

"Call up the local schools. We might find someone who matches his description." Kurenai sighed, "And don't forget to cuff him this time."

Naruto bit his lip hard to keep himself from saying anything else. This was not going to go well.

He wondered if Sasuke was going to find a way to get him out of this strange place and back into the real world. At least there he understood why he was in trouble.

...

**This is your review reminder. Review.**


	2. Chapter 2

** I suppose I haven't warned you, but you should have been by the rating and the fact that this story is half romance. It's SasukexNaruto. So... sorry, but I really like them.**

...

_"Even the best can get carried away," Kakashi had said. "Don't dwell on it, Naruto. Just step up, and move forward."_

_ "I can't."_

...

Naruto rested his head against the table. He was locked in an empty room, forced to sit by himself and stare at his own reflection. He couldn't managed to look at himself. He'd thrown up once already, and someone had come in, cleaned it up, and left without a word. _I don't have to worry about losing control now, do I? _

Naruto's possession mark-free face was making him sick to his stomach.

With his fingers, he pressed his nails against his cheek where the marks should be and dragged them across. His face looked wider without them, and empty. His eyes, sunken in his face from malnutrition, were the sole pattern on his face and they stuck out like twin stars, blue and cold.

Naruto groaned to himself as his stomach shot up another hunger pain. There was something else, another need to be satiated in his body that he didn't understand, and Naruto tried to pretend it was thirst.

The door finally opened.

A monster stepped through.

Naruto froze where he sat. He couldn't move, he couldn't breath. His limbs snapped to attention in fear and refused to budge. "It..." he stumbled over the worlds, "Itachi... Uchiha."

"In the flesh," Itachi said casually, "I have to say, it's been awhile since a criminal has tried to play the 'long lost son of Minato Namikaze' card." He sat down, flipped a pair of square glasses onto his face, and squinted at a dossier in his hands. "This is an unflattering picture," he said, "don't you think?" He held up the photograph.

A young Naruto, in clothes the current Naruto didn't recognize but a face he did from being about thirteen years old, looked at Naruto with a cold expression.

"That's me," Naruto said. _Minus the possession marks. _He tried to relax.

Itachi Uchiha folded his family-murdering-and-jinchuuriki-ripping-to-pieces-would-have-killed-Naruto-if-he-had-the-chance-out-of-some-belief-that-it-would-be-good-for-Sasuke hands. He leaned forward, staring his frighteningly dark eyes right into Naruto's. Naruto tensed, expecting the eyes to turn red at any moment. "You are a missing person, Naruto Uzumaki. Your guardian, Iruka Siboku, filed this dossier two years ago."

_That's not the sur name of the Iruka I know_, Naruto thought.

"Praytell, where have you been the last two years? It seems to me like it hasn't been very good to you." Itachi Uchiha, the bastard, glared at Naruto. "Why did you run?"

A thought suddenly burst into Naruto's mind, a perfect, wonderful thought. _If Itachi is here then Sasuke must be nearby!_ Then two, dark thoughts crushed the moment of joy. _Sasuke wouldn't know me here, _was the first, and the second, _It's not my Sasuke anyways._

"Why did you run, Mr. Uzumaki?"

Naruto had no idea. "I have no idea," he said truthfully.

"If I don't know why you left than I can't help you," Itachi Uchiha said calmly. The Akatsuki scum lowered his glasses off his face. "I can't imagine someone like you, a boy who lived off the streets for ten years, running away from a person who had adopted them without good reason. I'm willing to listen to you."

"I don't know," Naruto said, _You scum-of-the-earth, family-murdering, Sasuke-traumatizing, good-guy-but-then-not, walking-guilt-trip_.

"Then I suppose I have nothing to do but call this Mr. Iruka and have him come and get you," Itachi Uchiha said as a threat.

"Fine, Akatsuki bastard," Naruto growled. He froze when he realized he said that aloud.

"Akatsuki?" Itachi Uchiha looked confused.

"What?" Naruto pretended to be confused as well.

"Mr. Uzumaki, are you sure there is nothing you would like to say to me?" Naruto shook his head and so Itachi said, "Would you like my number?" Without waiting for a reply he took a card out of his pocket and handed it to Naruto. "Call anytime, on any phone."

Even without knowing the world, Naruto could feel like Itachi was doing more than he should. "Why?"

Itachi brushed some of his dark hair out of his eyes and said, "I remember you. You were in my brother's class. You were on his soccer team. I remember how close you were with Iruka. I can't believe you didn't run for a reason."

"I _don't know_," Naruto hissed. Fueled with sudden anger, he leaned forward and insisted, "I don't know _anything_."

"Explain," Itachi Uchiha said simply.

"Uh..." Naruto blanked.

"Is it amnesia?"

Naruto didn't know what the word meant. "I... Let's just pretend that I woke up in a random place, with no clue where I am, sourrounded by things I don't understand, forced to answer questions about a past I don't remember?"

"Are we really pretending?" Itachi Uchiha asked seriously.

"No," Naruto confessed to the man he hated more than any other in the world, with the occassional exception.

"Then I'd have to bring you to a hospital, leave a guard with you, notify your guardian, and have you evaluated by a psychiatrist." Iruka reached into a file and handed something to Naruto. "Do you recognize this person?"

It was a heavy man with a large beard. Naruto blinked at it. "Should I...?"

"Don't play dumb. Who is this?"

Naruto just looked at it.

"Alright. Come with me and we'll take you to the hospital." Itachi Uchiha, the man who was supposed to be a rotting blind corpse, stood up.

"Who is that guy," Naruto asked nervously.

"Your drug dealer, kid," he said calmly and mercilessly.

Naruto blinked in confusion and didn't understand.

...

_Naruto hadn't meant to kill the man as he had. He'd just needed information._

_ "Sakura," he had growled, "WHERE IS SHE?"_

_ The man had said nothing. He had looked up at Naruto and he had smiled._

...

"His BMI is far too low," Tsunade said. She had studiously ignored the gaping look she had receiving from Naruto. She had looked pissed, and she had turned her chest away, apparently thinking that was the cause of it all. "We'll need to stick an IV in him and get him eating. From what I can tell, it's been a couple days since his last fix, so we should be expecting withdrawl soon. In his state, I don't like to think of what that might due to him. We can either hold of the withdrawl with medical heroin for a few days until he gets strength, or we can risk leaving him how he is now."

The police officer Itachi Uchiha had assigned to Naruto shook his head and scratched his temple. "Well," Asuma said, "I don't know. I just responded to a call."

Itachi Uchiha was by Asuma's side and he took over. "There's a chance the kid could die if he withdrawls now?"

They were talking outside in the hallway, but Naruto was sitting by the door and could hear the entire thing. He was supposed to be in bed, but he'd never liked sitting still.

The hospital here was cleaner and more crisp than the one in Konoha, and instead of smelling like a healthy hospital did, like blood, this one smelled like chemicals. It smelled like a morgue.

The room was unbearably white and had a second occupant, a very old man attatched to something that continuously beeped. It was annoying the heck out of Naruto, enough to make him remember why he always ran away from hospitals.

"Not a high chance, I could probably stabilize him if I stayed with him all night, but it's still enough to make me worry," Tsunade said.

"Well, if it's making someone like you worry, then I give the 'okay' for the temporary fix. You can accept my decision until we figure out what's going on with Mr. Iruka," Itachi Uchiha said.

"You can't make contact with the guardian?" Tsunade asked.

"We have," Itachi Uchiha said, "but I'd appreciate not needing to disclose any more information."

"Is this boy truly fifteen?" Tsunade wondered.

Asuma nodded. "Just another one of those street kids that damned war left us with."

"You can't blame _him,_" Tsunade said, "not-"

"Of course I don't blame Minato Namikaze. He was a hero. War still has costs though, and the fact is we had far too many orphans for our single orphanage, leaving then to wander about the streets, that was a damned heavy consequence," Asuma growled.

"Morals. From _you, _Asuma? I'm surprised."

"I'm getting a divorce for fucks sake. Can everyone stop hating me now?" Asuma snapped.

Itachi Uchiha chuckled. "You brought it on yourself."

"It's my damned business whether or not I'm with Kurenai."

"And getting her pregnant."

"And it's no concern of yours!" Asuma shouted.

"Alright," Itachi Uchiha said. "Alright. Back to the kid. What do you think is the matter with his memory?"

"Most likely useage. There are experimental drugs out there that many dangerous people are unloading on poor children like this, one of them could have overloaded his mind enough that it affected his memory. He could regain it; he might not get it back. We'll just have to wait and see." Tsunade explained, "In the mean time, he'll be getting strength back in under a month. If whatever problem there is with his guardian persists, then what do you expect to do?"

"Is that our problem?" Asuma asked angrily.

"No. It isn't. But we'll have to release the boy, we can't keep him at the hospital forever, and when we do he'll be right back on the streets." From her tone of voice, Naruto just knew Tsunade was glaring at them.

"Well," Itachi Uchiha said, "I'm taking ownership of him now, I might as well stick with it. I'll keep the kid until we find a foster home."

"In the Uchiha mansion?" Asuma asked, unbelieving.

"My parents might berail me, but we have plenty of room and plenty of food to keep the kid for a few weeks," Itachi Uchiha said, "but that's far off in the future. In the meantime, I have a homicide to investigate."

"Yes, we all have work to do," Tsunade said. Then, suddenly, she opened the door. The three adults stared at Naruto.

Naruto nervously rubbed the back of his neck. "Uh..."

"Get in bed!" Tsunade yelled, "You're a patient, damn it!"

"Sheesh, grandma, calm down," Naruto said automatically. Asuma snickered. Tsunade glared at Naruto. _She doesn't know who I am,_ Naruto realized, _she has no idea. _He felt heartbroken at the thought.

"In bed," Tsunade steamed, "now."

Naruto complied.

...

_It started with Naruto pinning him down with kunai. Naruto had pierced the kunai through the enemy ninja's hands. The enemy ninja had swallowed back a scream._

_ "The pink haired ninja! DON'T MESS WITH ME!" Naruto had yelled as red circled his body like flames from hell._

...

For three weeks he stayed in the hospital.

Four times, he escaped successfully and came back after haggling for a bowl of ramen. Eighty-seven times, he escaped unsuccessfully and was caught and lectured by Tsunade. She hated him, and by the end she was calling him 'That damned druggie, amnesiac teenager giving me a hernia' in an affectionate way.

When it was time for him to leave, she kissed him on the forehead and told him to take care. She handed him her necklace. "You'd better come for checkups," she said, "and you had better call."

"Of course," Naruto replied, "always, grandma."

She let him change into the clothes Naruto had picked out of a donation box given to the hospital, jeans, a black shirt, and an orange sweatshirt, but then she walked with him down to the lobby. "Naruto," Tsunade said right before they stepped into the waiting room.

"Yeah?" Naruto turned.

There was a somber look on her face as she stepped forward. She reached up with her hands, adjusting Naruto's hood. "You changed so much since you first arrived."

"I can use a phone now," Naruto joked.

"Don't regress, okay?" Tsunade said seriously, "Just keep getting better. Be that happy young man I know."

"Of course."

"Also," Tsunade added, "the Uchihas are a very large, very rich, and very powerful family. You can't piss them off and act like you were here. Remember table manners, if at all possible, don't talk too much, and try and make friends, I hear they have a son your age."

"Sasuke," Naruto said, forgetting no one had ever told him Sasuke's name.

"Exactly. So step through that door and meet your foster family." Tsunade put her hands on her hips. She didn't follow Naruto through the door.

The waiting room was just a large room full of slightly comfortable chairs and coffee tables loaded with magazines, where people who looked deathly ill and others who looked like they were just there for the magazines were sitting sporatically around the room. The Uchihas were not sitting.

_Oh no, _Naruto thought, _they are too cool to merely 'sit'_. Itachi Uchiha was talking to someone Naruto didn't recognize from this world or the other, a short, red headed woman carrying a clipboard.

Sasuke was leaning against the wall, staring at something in his hand. It took Naruto a moment to recognize, from the innumerable hours of television he'd watched to 'relearn' everything, that it was an ipod.

"Sasuke," Naruto whispered too quietly for anyone but himself to hear, "it's your fault I'm here in this backward world." But he knew he didn't hold a grudge, he never could with Sasuke.

The short woman with the red-hair and the clipboard said something sharply to Itachi Uchiha and they both turned around.

Naruto walked nervously up to them. He still hated Itachi Uchiha, but he did recognize that was an emotion that spilled over from the other world. This Itachi Uchiha hadn't been anything but kind to Naruto.

"Naruto," Itachi Uchiha greeted, "this is my fiance, Amaya Gina."

Amaya Gina smiled a pleasant smile, and shook Naruto's hand with a hard grip. "I've heard a lot about you. You're the reason the Uchihas had a practical civil war."

"Don't," Itachi Uchiha said out of the corner of his mouth. He turned to Sasuke. "Sasuke," he called out, "come and meet our new houseguest."

Sasuke, without looking up, stepped over to where the three were gathered. He stood right in front of Naruto, didn't glance up, and greeted Naruto with a "Hn."

"Well," Itachi said with a glare to his brother. He looked at Naruto and smiled a light, slightly vague, smile. "I've put your name into the foster system, and with our family's influence it shouldn't be long until we have a response, so this situation is temporary at best."

Naruto nodded.

Iruka was married and had a child. He had refused to take Naruto back after learning that Naruto was rehabbing from drug use in a hospital. _Iruka _didn't want to deal with Naruto.

Itachi led Naruto and the others out of the building, and to a sleek, black car. He clicked it on and sat in the front, and his fiance, Amaya Gina, sat in the other front seat. Sasuke got in the side behind Itachi, and Naruto followed his example and sat behind Amaya Gina.

"So," Itachi said, "we'll eat when we get home." He pulled out of the hospital and started driving on a long freeway, a word Naruto only knew from television, and continued to speak. "You can wait a day if you like, but tomorrow is a monday and the first day of school. We enrolled you in the same school as Sasuke for the time being. It's a specialist high school."

_I miss being an adult_, Naruto thought with disgust back to his abysmal and lonely school days. "I'll go," he complied.

"Sasuke will watch out for you there, won't he?" Itachi stressed.

"Hn," Sasuke answered. Naruto got the impression that Sasuke had been forced to come down and meet him at the hospital.

Sasuke, staring at his ipod, sat only a foot away from Naruto. His perfect black hair sculting a pristine white face, accenting onyx eyes and the handsomest features ever seen on a man. His fingers were long and his nails perfect, wrapped around the listening device, his lithe arm holding it against his lap and the other leaning cooly against the window. A light blue dress shirt, black pants, and expensive black shoes couldn't do justice to a body divined by gods. A body that contained the only truly wonderful thing Naruto had ever known.

_Sasuke_, he thought, breathing the word in like ambrosia. The new word couldn't lessen the wonder Naruto felt so near to _him_.

"We've talked to the teachers about you. They're just going to evaluate where you are in your studies and take you from there," Itachi Uchiha told Naruto kindly.

Naruto only nodded. He tore his eyes away from Sasuke, and found his gaze drawn to the window where he could see both of their reflections. He spent the twenty minutes watching Sasuke breathe. Sasuke had yet to even look at him.

...

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